June 6, 2018

Artful, twisted, and scary as hell, the indie horror film Hereditary is designed to mess you up. You won’t find the pleasant chills of the ghost story or the cathartic thrills of the slasher. Instead, the film trades in real human anxieties, hideously disturbing images, and the occasional headless cultist. It’s a lot of fun.

Toni Collette plays Annie Graham, an emotionally fragile gallery artist who specializes in meticulously assembled miniatures. Annie’s cruel, creepy mother has just died from dementia, and her little girl, Charlie, has started to make miniatures of her own—with dead animal parts. Meanwhile, Annie’s relationship with her teenage son Peter is a bit strained ever since that night when she kinda-sorta tried to kill him.

Yes, the Grahams are a troubled lot. The sinister strategy of Hereditaryis to dig deep into the festering wounds of one family’s dysfunction—grief, guilt, resentment, and neglect—and then turn the emotional violence into both physical and metaphysical trauma.

Director Ari Aster conjures echoes of classic familial horror films of the past, such as The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, and Carrie. But then he confounds expectations with a series of bold narratives swerves concerning the Graham family ancestry.

Collette is simply brilliant in the lead. She really should be officially funded, like a national monument. And Broadway child actor Milly Shapiro does new things with the standard Spooky Little Girl role. But the real star is Aster, who has delivered an extremely disturbing yet carefully controlled art-house horror show.

Despite some unfortunate choices in the closing scenes, Hereditary largely transcends its disreputable genre. In fact, it fits better into the older literary tradition known as weird fiction, which often uses supernatural elements to explore all-too-real human themes and fears. This is the best horror film of the year so far.

May 31, 2018

As corporate custodians of George Lucas’s space-opera vision, Disney executives have actually done an admirable job with the new batch of Star Wars movies. They’ve commissioned clever scripts, hired smart people, and developed some good films. Movie math is always tricky, but surely everyone can agree with the certainty that The Last Jedi > The Phantom Menace.

Like 2016’s Rogue One, the new franchise installment, an origin story for beloved space smuggler Han Solo, is a spinoff from the main series of films, ostensibly designed to be one-off endeavor. If Rogue One was basically a war picture set in the Star Wars universe, then Solo is a space Western—and a pretty good one, too.

Blockbuster rookie Alden Ehrenreich takes over for Harrison Ford, and he’s perfectly adequate when channeling the character’s outlaw charm. Ehrenreich lacks Ford’s inherent forcefulness, though, and as a result, the entire movie has a lightweight quality that sometimes undercuts the thrills. There’s no menace, phantom or otherwise. Fans of the late, great sci-fi franchise Firefly will recognize the vibe; the movie is remarkably similar in its pulpy comic tone.

Director Ron Howard ably stages a series of action-packed set pieces, including an urban landspeeder chase, several gunslinger showdowns, and the infamous hyperspace heist known as the Kessel Run. The script’s best invention, though, is the suffragette droid L3-37, who doubles as a love interest for dedicated space pansexual Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). Weird, funny, and unexpected, the droid-love subplot is the movie’s second-best surprise. First place goes to a last-minute character reveal that sets things up for a potentially intriguing sequel.

In the spirit of internet-age rankings, I’d sequence the new movies thusly: Rogue One > The Force Awakens > Solo > The Last Jedi. Feel free to disagree. That’s half the fun.

May 31, 2018

Asequel to the surprise 2016 blockbuster, Deadpool 2 is one of those rare follow-ups that improves upon the original, expanding its ideas instead of repeating them. If the first movie was a halfhearted R-rated Spider-Man(it was), then the new one is a controlled detonation of the superhero-movie template: filthy, funny, and cheerfully ultraviolent.

The Deadpool series stars Ryan Reynolds as a suicidal wiseass mercenary whose superpower is that he can’t be killed. He can be shot, stabbed, lacerated, suffocated, decapitated, eviscerated, mutilated, and incinerated, but he can’t actually die. Deadpool is also aware that he’s in a movie, which opens up another layer of meta comedy as he delivers a steady patter of fanboy in-jokes. (“You’re so dark,” he says to one villain. “Are you sure you’re not from the DC Universe?”)

Plot-wise, Deadpool 2 is ostensibly about the formation of the super group X-Force and its battle against the time-traveling cyborg Cable (Josh Bolin). But this movie isn’t about what it’s about. The talky script (cowritten by Reynolds) deploys plot elements only to serve the film’s more noble purpose of making us laugh.

Hundreds upon hundreds of gags crash down in a delirious cascade of dirty jokes and disposable pop culture. Jokes about LinkedIn and body cavities and Arby’s. Jokes about melanoma and strap-ons and dubstep. Jokes about Basic Instinct and Flashdance and Yentl. Jokes about Dave Matthews and Pat Benatar and Enya. At times, the script achieves the giddy density of peak TV comedies like 30 Rock; you’re afraid to laugh because three more punch lines will slip past.

Not all the jokes land, and the movie sometimes tries too hard to offend. For instance, I counted at least three jokes about pedophilia and sexual violence against kids. Really? We’re doing that now? For laughs? These aren’t throwaway lines, either; they’re graphic and directed specifically at a fourteen-year-old character played by a sixteen-year-old performer. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s fucked up.

On balance, though, Deadpool 2 is a seriously funny comedy and a genuinely good time at the movies. It’s fearless in a way that the first film only pretended to be. I laughed more at this superhero story than at any other multiplex comedy in recent memory. Avoid spoilers, watch for some great cameos, and hang around for the post-credits scenes.

May 31, 2018

RBG, the new documentary chronicling the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is way more fun than it might sound. Surprisingly bouncy and engaging, it charts Ginsburg’s gradual ascension from pioneering legal scholar to eighty-five-year-old pop-culture icon.

RBG is one of those rare docs that built enough momentum on its festival rounds (it opened Full Frame this year) to propel it onto the indie cinema circuit. It’s perfectly timed for a theatrical run through the heart of the American zeitgeist. With SNL skits and Notorious RBG T-shirts, Ginsburg has found a new generation of young admirers energized by #MeToo and America’s broader resistance. As the Supreme Court continues its rightward drift, Ginsberg has become an absolutely critical voice: our Great Dissenter.

March 16, 2018

In 2013, the venerable Tomb Raider video game franchise unveiled its tenth installment in the series, a complete reboot/origin story with a new emphasis on gritty realism and emotional stakes. The new game was clearly designed to retire the persona of the old Lara Croft—a stone-cold fox with cartoonish female proportions—and introduce the new Lara as a likable and vulnerable rookie archaeologist.

It worked. Tomb Raider was one of the best games of 2013, with a storytelling strategy that encouraged players to empathize and identify with young Lara. The back story was solid and the cinematic cut scenes were visceral and gritty. When Lara is forced to kill her first mercenary goon, she actually throws up.

The new Tomb Raider movie, based on that 2013 game, includes a similar scene, and it’s a perfect indicator of the film’s determination to reinvent the Lara Croft character for the silver screen. As played by the formidable Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), Lara is no longer the sexy, icy killer of the Angelina Jolie movies. She’s young and inexperienced; tough and resourceful. She’s funny, too, and the filmmakers have a good time playing with the de rigueur video game tropes that longtime franchise fans will appreciate—watch out for those exploding red barrels!

March 6, 2018

A few months after V-E Day, outside a small Hungarian village, two strangers disembark from a train that pours sinister black smoke into the sweltering summer sky. Dressed in somber black suits, the men hire a cart to transport two steamer trunks into the village. Their arrival and the rumored contents of their cart trigger a panic in the village. In conspiratorial whispers, the news spreads: “The Jews have returned.”

Director Ferenc Török’s 1945, based on the short story “Homecoming” by Gábor T. Szántó, is a grim parable about guilt and the wages of sin. Filmed in dramatic, high-contrast black-and-white, it borrows tropes from classic Hollywood Westerns to tell a story that moves through darker territories.

A quick bit of history helps: during and after World War II, many rural villagers in occupied Europe profited from the deportation of their Jewish neighbors. Ownership of all those homes and storefronts had to eventually change hands. Self-appointed local officials had a vested interest in this system. But sometimes, the Jews returned.

The film unfolds over one afternoon, and the story has the dark, elegant efficiency of a fable—the old and scary type. The villagers clearly share a terrible secret, and each reacts differently to the arrival of the strangers. The mayor scrambles to destroy incriminating paperwork. His wife numbs her guilt with morphine. Only the town drunk seems prepared to face the truth.

Török’s furtive camera peers through curtains and around fence posts. Small objects take on terrible significance: a property deed, a child’s shoe. Spare, haunting music adds tension and complexity to carefully arranged visual compositions. When the purpose of the strangers’ visit is finally revealed, it’s devastating. This is cinematic storytelling at its finest, and 1945 is one of the best films of the year.

January 23, 2018

From the film review staff at Indy Week, an informal Best Of for 2017…

1.GOOD TIME

Raw, rambunctious, and funny, Good Time redeems American cinema from the doldrums of pre-packaged comic-book franchises and inert middle-class dramas. Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) traverses New York’s five boroughs, stealing and jumping fences, to rescue his mentally ill brother from a state-run facility. Dramatizing Connie’s odyssey with desperate dark humor, Ben and Josh Safdie emerge as unique filmmakers capable of toeing the line between exploitation and gritty social realism with actual heart. —Laura Jaramillo

2.GET OUT

Writer-director Jordan Peele pulls off an impossibly difficult maneuver with the fabulous, timely Get Out, delivering a real American horror story about race and violence that also works as grim satire. Peele understands that timing is key to both comedy and horror, and his beautifully crafted script unwinds with clockwork precision. It’s the movie we didn’t know we needed until we saw it. —Glenn McDonald